Practice to Deceive (13 page)

“Much chance there is of staying here that long,” he grunted. “All the Major can think of is to get himself away from you, miss. And how I'm to keep him here once he starts to get well, is more than I know. He's so stubborn as any ox, Miss Penelope, once he sets his mind to something. By tomorrow, or the next day, there'll be no holding him, and so I warn you. I knows him!”

“To leave here before Thursday would be madness! You cannot even think—” She checked. The Corporal was listening intently. Penelope heard the footsteps then and ran frenziedly for her bed, whipping the supplies under it, and barely having time to pull the eiderdown close up around her chin and think that it was probably only Daffy again, before the door opened.

But it was not Daffy. A housemaid carried in a tray with a pot of tea and biscuits and a bowl of fresh fruit. She was a pretty creature with glistening red-gold hair, friendly blue eyes, and an air of gentility that was intriguing. Her name, she said, was Betty, thus confirming Penelope's thought that she must be the new housemaid of whom Daffy had spoken. She had asked permission to bring up the tray, and she said sympathetically that she knew what it meant to be sick and all alone. Kindness had become a rare commodity in Penelope's life, and she was touched. She was also alarmed, because it had been a very close call that must not be repeated. After the maid had gone, she got out of bed and went to the dressing room to reassure the Corporal. She then changed into her nightdress, determined to wear it constantly from now on, so as to be prepared in case somebody else paid her a surprise visit.

All was quiet, however, until Daffy arrived in a short while, carrying the cage with her reprieved canary. She was aghast to find her mistress clad in night rail. It was in vain for Penelope to point out that her flannel nightdress with its high collar and long sleeves covered her far more decorously than had many of the pretty gowns she'd worn before going into blacks. Daffy was much shocked. “Only think, miss,” she murmured, as they sat mending together, “if it should ever become known as ye'd been in this room—all night. On your
own!
With not so much as a lock 'twixt you and …
them!
”

Her face hot, Penelope straightened the pillowcase she was hemming. “Well, it will not become known. And whatever you may imply, Daffy, you certainly are aware I came to no—er, harm, for they are honourable gentlemen, both.”

Daffy sniffed, unconvinced.

“Besides,” Penelope went on, soothingly, “you will be sleeping in here tonight, so I shall be properly chaperoned and we all may be comfortable.”

It was not to prove her most successful prediction.

Quentin continued to sleep throughout the evening. After Daffy had brought their dinner upstairs, the Corporal, a gregarious individual, engaged Penelope in a whispered colloquy and they chatted for over an hour, formulating elaborate plans for their escape, each of which eventually had to be discarded for one reason or another.

Daffy reappeared with an armful of books that were gratefully received. However, in snatching the volumes from the shelves of the book room, Daffy had not taken time to read the titles. She had brought a treatise on
The Occasional Onset of Baldness Following an Interval of Fever
; a
Life of Pedro Arias de Avila
; a dissertation upon the trials of a missionary group attempting to teach dressmaking to a tribe of head-hunters in Equatorial Africa; and an epic poem detailing the struggle of an Archbishop against his lust for a flower seller. Penelope selected the biography, and with a hopeful gleam in his eye the Corporal retired to look into the activities of the lustful Archbishop, aided by a candle.

Penelope had supposed that the story of Señor de Avila would contain some of the colour and customs of a distant land. Instead, it proved to be a particularly gruesome recounting of the deeds of a gentleman who had evidently spent most of his ninety years executing anyone who might in some field of endeavour prove superior to himself. An hour later, Penelope set the book aside with a shudder and snuggled under the covers.

She was tired and soon fell asleep, to wake briefly when Daffy came in. The abigail was extremely nervous about disrobing “in front of Corporal Robert Killiam,” and although Penelope reminded her drowsily that the Corporal would not think of opening the door without first knocking and receiving permission, Daffy spent ten minutes of painful struggle shedding her garments from beneath the protective but encumbering folds of her voluminous nightdress.

Penelope drifted back into slumber. She was again jolted awake at some later hour. At first she entertained the notion that Daffy was talking in her sleep, but a moment afterwards a throaty gobbling informed her that the ‘talker' was Jasper. It was a small annoyance, she thought, to which one could quickly become accustomed. Her eyes opened a good deal wider when the gobbling became a soft chirping, interspersed by occasional but quite shrill warbles. Gritting her teeth, Penelope pulled the eiderdown higher about her ears and at last fell asleep.

Daffy slept like a log, but she was prone to making sudden violent turns during which she sat halfway up and lay down again, taking most of the bedding with her. Penelope was wrenched awake by two such upheavals and, having considered the benefits of strangling her faithful abigail and rejecting the notion, was once more wooing sleep when a new disturbance brought her sitting bolt upright in bed.

Someone was throwing gravel at the windowpane. Her heart leapt. Perhaps Gordon Chandler had come back! Perhaps he had managed to get through the patrols and had brought a fast coach in which to bear them safely away!

She threw back the blankets and sped eagerly to the lighter grey square that was the window. Before she reached it, however, she gave a squeal as her bare foot came into excruciating contact with something hard and sharp. Moaning softly, she limped over to the window seat where she knelt and parted the curtains.

The moon rode high on the wings of a wide-spreading cloud; the night sky was jetty black close at hand, but with a greying edge at the eastern horizon that told of the inexorable creep of dawn. The empty flowerbeds beneath the window and the patch of lawn between it and the drivepath were quite visible and completely deserted.

Puzzled, she brushed from the sole of her foot whatever it was she had stepped upon, only to tense, her attention caught by a movement at the corner of the house. A man's tall figure appeared. So it
had
been Gordon! She threw open the window and leaned forward, but the call she prepared to utter was stifled abruptly. A pipe glowed red as the man strolled nearer, and the moonlight revealed that his coat was also red. Penelope stared, appalled, as the soldier waved a friendly hand. Jerking her head around she distinguished a second man approaching from the east face of the house; a man who carried a musket slung across one shoulder, with above it the deadly gleam of a bayonet. She shrank back, and knelt there, her brain spinning. So Highview was under guard! Did they know, then, that Quentin was in the house? Were they here to keep him from escaping? Or did they hope to apprehend him if he
did
come?

She wrung her hands distractedly. Surely, if they suspected he was here, the soldiers would hesitate not an instant to arrest him. To arrest them all! They could not know. And there had seemed to be no urgency about their movements. They had behaved more as men mildly bored than as men guarding—or preparing to apprehend—a dangerous fugitive. Biting at her knuckle, Penelope considered waking the Corporal. She decided it would be better to let him get a good night's sleep. He might stand in need of all his wits tomorrow. In the morning she would try to discover why the soldiers were here.…

Preoccupied, she started back to her bed and did a small anguished dance as she again trod on some sharp particles. Bending to dust them from her feet she encountered more of the same. It came to her that the window had been closed when first she had reached it. And besides, there had been no sign of anyone flinging gravel to awaken her. Where then had this dreadful stuff come—

A sudden scrambling sounded above her. As she started up, she was deluged by a flying shower of debris from the bird cage. Her gasp of shock was echoed by a shrill squealing, for all the world like avian mirth.

It was Penelope's first experience of Jasper's ‘naughty habits.'

*   *   *

“Wake up, miss,” cried Daffy cheerfully, pulling back the bedcurtains. “I know as you slept so snug as a bug in a rug, for there was not one peep out of you all night long.” It occurred to her then that her mistress lay staring at her with a rather odd expression, and she added confidently that Miss Penny would feel better after she'd et her nice breakfast. She then tripped off to deliver some smuggled bread and sliced ham to their guests and to exchange some pleasantries with the Corporal. Returning, her cheeks pink and her eyes very bright, she stood guard while Penelope washed, and assisted her to change her nightdress while observing in a pleasantly flustered way that one could always tell a military man “because they do all be such owdacious flirts!”

“Speaking of which,” said Penelope, searching her face anxiously, “have you noticed any soldiers loitering about Highview?”

Daffy gave a gasp, and gripped her apron convulsively. “Oh, miss! You know, then? I'd not said nothing 'cause I couldn't find out what they're up to, but Betty's spoke with them. Quite a flirt she be, and not what I'd first thought her, I must say.”

“Did she learn anything?”

“Only that there's two of 'em what comes at sundown and prowls about the grounds after dark. Only … today there's another pair, miss. Trying to make their silly selves invisible. As if everyone hasn't seen 'em lurking about in the shrubbery!”

Penelope's heart sank. “But—Betty doesn't know
why
they're here?”

“She says they're likely keeping a eye on all the big estates, thinking the poor Major, being Quality, might be given shelter.” Brushing out Penelope's long hair, Daffy sighed heavily. “Not going to make it any easier to get him away, is it, miss?”

Penelope agreed and was lost in gloomy introspection until a shriek from Jasper reminded her of his nocturnal activities, and she put his owner in full possession of his behaviour.

Daffy was remorseful. Jasper, she admitted,
did
scratch about “just a little,” but she was quick to clean up after him, and she would put the cage where he wouldn't bother miss again.

“In the south meadow?” enquired Penelope.

“Maybe I could tuck him in with the gentlemen,” Daffy proposed innocently.

“You most assuredly could not! Major Chandler must have every possible moment of rest and quiet.”

“Aye, well, he be a new man today, though that great foolish Corporal Robert Killiam would likely have you believe as the funeral's next week! Would you like me to put your hair in ringlets like you used to—”

“Good gracious, no! This is no time for me to try to improve my looks. Pray put on my ‘illness' again, and tell me—is there news of my uncle?”

Daffy fashioned the thick tresses into a braid and wound it around her mistress's head. Through a mouthful of hairpins she mumbled, “If there was, I s'pose her la'ship would've cancelled her dinner party. But she hasn't, so—”

“Her—
what?
” Startled, Penelope exclaimed, “She cannot give a dinner party! We are in mourning!”

“Milor's away, miss,” said Daffy with a cynical shrug. “And Lady Sybil's always complaining how lonely it is here. Though, was you to ask me, she finds her share of company.”

Furious, Penelope muttered, “I suppose she would say that in three months she can put off her blacks.”

Daffy uttered a scornful snort and took out her paints and brushes. They did not converse while the wan look was under construction, but Penelope's mind was busy. She decided that she must put in an appearance downstairs later on and try to come at why the soldiers were here and for how long they would stay. The prospect was a dismal one, for once she resumed her usual routine she would be expected to take her meals in the dining room with her aunt, and it would be so much more difficult to smuggle food up here. Troubled, she put on her dressing gown when Daffy was finished, and went to the dressing room.

Her soft knock was answered by Quentin, wearing Geoffrey's dressing gown over his nightshirt, the sight of which brought a momentary grief to her eyes. Quick to note that changed expression and to divine the reason for it, he threw her a courtly bow and replied to her protest by declaring breezily that he was in excellent point and ready to race from Land's End to John o' Groats if need be.

Penelope laughed at him, her heart soaring because the glitter of fever had left his eyes, his grin was as carefree as she remembered and, although he was still thin and pale, the bruises did not look quite so lurid.

His own gaze had become intent also. He said with a trace of irritation, “You are tired, I think. I doubt you slept well with your maid sharing your bed.” He ushered her to the chair and, apparently not hearing her request that he lie down again, instead sat on the neatly made bed.

Penelope glanced around curiously.

“If you're looking for my batman,” he said whimsically, “he's stepped out to the barber.”

A derogatory snort wafted from behind the sheet that had been stretched across one corner of the little room to form a private area.

“Good heavens,” cried Penelope in exaggerated dismay. “Never say we are—all alone, sir?”

It was a return to the lighthearted raillery they had indulged in five years ago. Entering her drama at once, Quentin said menacingly, “
All
alone, fair lady! And both, mark you, in our night rail! Faith, but were I not a thorough rogue, I'd be most shocked!” She chuckled and he went on in his normal voice, “You really are thoroughly compromised, you know.”